Civil service regs may have prompted Kelly's suicide

John Keegan thinks the civil service regulations prohibiting communication with the media may have prompted Dr. Kelly's despair. His communication with the BBC had put his pension in jeopardy.

"...It is Dr Kelly's death, apparently by his own hand, that makes the crisis serious. The implicit allegation is that he took his own life in despair, driven to suicide by the insensitivity of his parliamentary investigators and the alien experience of exposure to investigation by the media.

"No doubt his interrogation in public on television by the Commons foreign affairs committee was highly disturbing, particularly to a man who was patently a quiet and self-effacing scientist. No doubt the relentless probing and speculation by the press added to his distress.

"However, I doubt strongly that it was his treatment either by Parliament or the media that drove him over the edge. I suspect that the impulse that impelled him to end his life had other causes.

"Dr Kelly belonged to the Scientific Civil Service, in which he had spent most of his life, progressing by merit and hard work to the top of his career ladder. I know about the Scientific Civil Service since, for 26 years, I belonged to it. It might seem odd that someone teaching military history to officer cadets at Sandhurst should be classed as a Senior Scientific Officer, but so I was.'

"...All civil servants are subject to the service's disciplinary procedures and code. One of its most stringent articles forbids communication with the media. Indeed, at regular intervals, we were reminded in writing of the ban and Dr Kelly must have read the warning as often as I did.

"It had its effect. There could be no argument. A civil servant who communicated with the media and was discovered to have done so would be disciplined and had no defence.

"The ban - originally imposed for security reasons, but perpetuated to ensure government control of all government-owned knowledge - had its ludicrous aspects. Sandhurst, in my time, was full of ambitious young military historians anxious to make their reputations as authors. No dice. Anything written had to be submitted for official clearance.

"What about medieval history? Well, maybe. What about the First World War? Very tricky. Eventually it was decided that we need not submit anything written about events before August 4, 1914. So it was all right to describe the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand but not the departure of the BEF to France."

This explanation makes more sense than most of the British pres speculation. Particularly silly was a recent resprt suggest the man was in despair for being described as "eccentric."

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